Saturday Snapshot

 

Saturday Snapshots is hosted by Alyce at At Home With Books.

Yesterday, the 19th, was the anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing and in light of the devastating bombings in Boston this week, this post is meant as a tribute to the strength of our neighbours to the south.
I was especially moved by this clip of the Boston fans at this week's hockey game after the bombing.

I posted some images of the Historic Memorial in Oklahoma City when we were here in March 2013 but I wanted to show some more as well as explain more about it. I took most of the information from a ranger I spoke to there and more facts from Wikipedia.

On April 19,1995 Timothy McVeigh parked a Ryder truck outside of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building. The Oklahoma City bombing will be remembered as a senseless act of domestic terrorism that took 168 lives and left many changed forever.

 It would remain the most destructive act of terrorism on American soil until the September 11, 2001 attacks. The Oklahoma blast claimed 168 lives, including 19 children under the age of 6, and injured more than 680 people. The blast destroyed or damaged 324 buildings within a sixteen-block radius, destroyed or burned 86 cars, and shattered glass in 258 nearby buildings. The bomb was estimated to have caused at least $652 million worth of damage.

For two years after the bombing the only memorials to the victims were plush toys, crucifixes, letters, and other personal items left by thousands of people at a security fence surrounding the site of the building.

The memorial includes a reflecting pool flanked by two large gates, one inscribed with the time 9:01, the other with 9:03, the pool representing the moment of the blast.

One, marked 9:01, represents the peace that prevailed seconds before the bomb exploded. The second, marked 9:03, symbolizes the bomb’s aftermath, when, as the Memorial mission statement notes, those affected by the bomb were “changed forever.”

 On the south end of the memorial is The Field of Empty Chairs; a field of symbolic bronze and stone chairs—one for each person lost, arranged according to what floor of the building they were on. The chairs represent the empty chairs at the dinner tables of the victims' families. The seats of the children killed are smaller than those of the adults lost. 

 Of the 168 chairs there are two groups. One group of 163 for those who were inside the federal building at the time of the blast, and a group of five chairs at the far west end, next to the 9:03 Gate, of the Field of Empty Chairs that represent those individuals who were outside of the federal building, but lost their lives as a direct result of the attack. Four of the individuals that died outside of the federal building were on the north side of the street and the fifth individual, Rebecca Anderson, was a rescue worker who was hit with debris and died of head injuries a few days later.

At night the chairs are lit from below. They are decorated for the holidays.

These chairs moved me the most.

Nineteen children were killed in the building that day. Of those, fifteen were in the America's Kids Daycare which was located on the second floor represented by the second row of chairs. Three children were in the Social Security Administration on the first floor and one young girl was on the fourth floor visiting her father in his office.The chairs have been designed to look as if they are floating like a memory floats in and out of our conscience. At night the base lights up emphasizing the name etched into the glass base. The light is a soft light something like a nightlight that we would have used as children to take away the fear of the darkness .The lights in the chairs also take away the fear of the darkness; the darkness/evil that occurred at this site.

North of the memorial is the Journal Record Building, which now houses the Oklahoma City National Memorial Museum, an affiliate of the National Park Service. The building also contains the National Memorial Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism, a law enforcement training center.

This photo is from the National Park Service site.

Across the street there was this moving statue. St. Joseph’s Old Cathedral was extensively damaged when the bomb exploded across the street. Most of the stained glass windows on the east side of the church were shattered, and the pipe organ was extensively damaged. The explosion raised the roof several inches off its steel pillars and several of the rafters were broken. Plaster fell from the walls and ceiling and the painted, symbolic plaster medallions were destroyed. The church was closed for nearly two years. A statue carved from Italian marble entitled And Jesus Wept was created to commemorate the event.